The deal is sealed on the University of Texas’s purchase of a 100-acre hunk of land south of South Main St. as of last Friday. The sale marks the first concrete move toward UT’s planned Houston campus, though closings on the parcel patchwork comprising the rest of the 300-ish ac. likely won’t wrap up until early 2017, according to a press release from the school’s Office of Public Affairs.

The sold land is a forested tract northwest of the wiggly intersection of Willowbend Dr. and Buffalo Spdwy.; the property is split along a northwest-southeast diagonal by a linear drainage feature which makes an appearance in those preliminary campus designs (shown from the north in the image above).

That land was owned previously by Buffalo Lakes Ltd., an entity associated with UT grad John Kirksey of Kirksey Architecture. A plan for a Buffalo Lakes master-planned community (see below) was drawn up more than 4 years ago by Kirksey for the same space:

Over at the south end of Buffalo Speedway below West Bellfort, land is being cleared for a new development, these pics from last week show. The view is over the back fence of the 3-year-old Connection at Buffalo Pointe apartments, at 10201 Buffalo Speedway. A reader tells Swamplot some sort of permit document seen on the property labels it the Reserves at Buffalo Point. In a view over the fence but looking a little bit more to the east, most of the trees are still there — for now: